


Heartstrings

by AutumnPen



Category: Bastion
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnPen/pseuds/AutumnPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rucks contemplates Zia's life and what might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt my fiance sent me.

It has become their post-dinner custom to sit together and to talk. Most nights, Zia plays them a song or two. Sometimes she persuades one or more of them to join her, but tonight she is the only performer.

Rucks finds himself lost in thought during tonight's music. Rather than stew in his own memories though (as he is wont to do), he finds himself thinking of the young lady in front of him. The girl is a wonder, really. She has compassion by the boatload, but she's quite the firecracker if she's cross. Not to mention she's growing lovelier by the day. Life on the Bastion becomes her. She's taken to wearing her hair loose, she smiles often. Though part of him still longs for Caelondia, he hasn't been able to help growing attached to their little patch-work family. It was Zia, and her open and honest affection for them, that had encouraged him to let himself get attached this way.

He has begun to think of Zia like one might think of a daughter, and when he thinks back on the story she's shared with him, he wonders at how idiotic people can be. How could anyone not adore her? How could anyone not consider themselves lucky to know her? How could that rat bastard have done what he did to her?

He wonders if things would have gotten better for her if the Calamity never happened. He imagines her with friends, he imagines the suitors that would inevitably line up at her door to ask for her hand.

He imagines people stopping to listen, awe-struck, as she picks up her harp and lifts her voice. Because that's another thing she's got – talent. There's no use in denying it. When Zia sings, she affects people. When she plays, she makes people feel. When she plucks at the strings of her instrument she makes you think she could just as easily reach into you, put her hand in your chest and pluck at your heartstrings.

Rucks looks across to where Kid sits, completely rapt. (He doubts Kid realizes he stares like that.) He looks up to Zulf, his eyes dark, caught between the present and the past.

Zia could make an instrument of anyone.


End file.
